


Not Dead Yet

by Toastybluetwo



Category: Dragon Age
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-05
Updated: 2011-10-05
Packaged: 2017-10-24 08:15:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/261118
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Toastybluetwo/pseuds/Toastybluetwo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anders and Sigrun discuss death and end up reveling in life. (Spoilers for Dragon Age and Dragon Age: Awakenings.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Dead Yet

“I’ve been thinking about death,” Anders said to Sigrun.

“That’s not like you,” she replied quickly and without thinking.

Neither had touched a drop of strong drink. The Wardens had received their monthly pay that day, so Sigrun went to the nearest market and bought what she believed to be lemon-flavored spirits.

After all, the farmer had called it ‘lemonade’. Where was the aid that the drink so promised?

“Death isn’t that bad.” Sigrun sat at the small writing desk, while Anders sat on his bed.

“See, that’s the thing. You’re not really dead.” He leaned forward, placing his large hand on her breastbone. Within, underneath his splayed fingertips, her heart pounded. “You’ve got a nice, strong pulse. You’re breathing. You might be metaphorically dead, but you aren’t really.”

His hand was warm. The flagon of lemonade was cool. The air in Anders’ tiny quarters felt oppressive.

“Oh, I know that.” She could have easily removed his hand. Growing up in the slums of Orzammar, she had been groped by a number of males, and had shown them exactly how she felt about her personal space being violated.

This time, she didn’t feel violated.

“Why were you thinking about death?” She gently leaned backwards, allowing Anders’ hand to drop to one of her knees. “You weren’t talking to Justice again, were you?”

“Yes, but he had a point in our discussion. A very good point, might I add.” Anders withdrew his hand, resting it on his own knee now. “If you’re already dead, you have nothing left to lose. I think that’s the whole philosophy of the Legion of the Dead, if I’m right.”

“You’re right,” Sigrun said cheerfully. “It does make you look at the rest of your existence in a different way. I don’t get scared very often. Sometimes it happens, but most of the time, taking a chance is just something that I do. After all, what’s the worst thing that could happen? You could die, right?”

“You could die.” Scooping up his own flagon, Anders took a drink before setting it aside. “You know, maybe I’ve been going about this all wrong.” There was no cheer in his voice, but instead, he seemed to turn the words over in his own mouth. “I’ve been in danger a lot of times in my life. Just being a mage, and being alive, means a dangerous life. If you’re not an apostate and fleeing for your life, you’re locked in a Circle with people casting dangerous spells. I tried to avoid the thought of the inherent danger in it all. Maybe I should have just surrendered to the idea that I was dead already. The Maker obviously doesn’t want me to live comfortably and peacefully, so why not look forward to seeing him?”

“I…” Sigrun hesitated before she spoke again. “I don’t think suicide is the point. I don’t know a lot about human religion either, but I don’t think your Maker really wants you to suffer.”

“Sure he does.” Anders’ smile stretched thinly over his mouth. “I guess it’s his right. If you make a world and put people on it, you can do whatever you want. It’s like playing with toy soldier figurines. You can make them fight one another, or smash them flat in the dirt.” He illustrated the point by pounding one of his fists onto his knee.

“I had a toy nug once,” Sigrun said wistfully. “My uncle sold it to buy a pint at the pub.”

“Fear changes everything. Give away that fear and…it really changes things.” Staring at the ceiling for a moment, Anders took another drink of his lemonade.

Sigrun watched him, not speaking for a moment as she observed him. He seemed calm, but the cheerfulness that seemed to creep into anything he said and did was greatly diminished. What had Justice said to him that had changed Anders so much?

She found herself looking at his hands again. Her Legion of the Dead brothers had hands that knew nothing but abuse. Skin with deep, ragged scars, missing fingers, bruises and swelling, yet they were still very capable of their tasks. Anders’ hands were large, but pale and smooth. He had not known much in the way of physical labor. That much was obvious.

“I would go so far as to say that fear creates inhibition,” said Anders. His brown eyes rested on her face and, oh damn, he noticed where she was looking. She could tell in the way that he began gesture, as if putting on a show. “I’ve never been a man who subscribes to inhibition.”

“I drink a lot.” It was an odd thing to say, but somehow seemed appropriate. Then again, the events of the past few days had put a serious damper in her usual consumption of alcohol. “It lets me see things clearly.”

Then, the hands rested on her knees. Ancestors, were his hands large, and warm. She could feel their heat through her skin, in such a warm and comforting way that she was sure that she wanted more of them.

His skin on hers.

Ancestors, no. He was human, she was a dwarf. Humans were weird, but they did have needs, needful eyes, needful brown eyes that needed some kind of affirmation from her, as if she was an expert on death or something.

She knew the look. She was one of only a handful of women in the Legion. Dead or not, needs were needs, and unspoken and unwritten laws allowed for a few moments to fulfill those needs. Gender didn’t matter. Age didn’t matter.

They may have been called the Legion of the Dead, but they still had warm bodies.

Sigrun kissed Anders before he could kiss her. It wasn’t like her, after all, to let a man lead. She never had, not since she was a small girl cowering in the corners of Dust Town, not now, and never.

He responded, moving his hands to her waist, those large hands, the heat of them seeping through her tunic and to her skin. She found herself glad that she had spent part of her last month’s pay on a new tunic and trousers. Humans seemed to get squeamish when someone tried their best to wear their armor all the time, even when they were off duty, or in a pub trying to relax.

The tailor had offered to make her a dress. Sigrun had never owned one in her entire life.

She wanted to laugh at the mere memory of it. Instead, she slid her hands into his hair, fingers through strands, sliding down to the leather thong that held everything tightly in the ponytail. His hair was thicker than she imagined, smelled clean, and as she pulled it free of the thong, without a single tangle.

Anders broke the kiss only to move his lips to a new location – her chin. As his lips traced the road map of tattoos there, she whispered, no, confessed: “I’ve always wanted to see you with your hair down.”

“Same here.” His fingers moved up, tugged, and her hair came free of their pigtails, but not as refined and clean as his own locks. She cut her own hair with a knife, rarely with a mirror, and only when it annoyed her. The ragged strands fell over her damp forehead and burning cheeks.

It occurred to her, as Anders returned his lips to hers, that they were alone in a closed room. This wasn’t a back tunnel in the Deep Roads with a few ancient blankets to keep them warm and the real chance of darkspawn interruption. This could be kept private. Theirs.

They could take off their clothes. There would be no one but the spiders to see.

She reached for the bindings on his robes, the ones closest to his neck, but paused, and found herself confused. There were other bindings, lower ones, and different ones that laced a different way. “I see why you said that mages just pull up their robes,” she remarked, clumsily, between kisses and panted breaths.

Anders laughed, and as he undressed before her, she found herself rethinking the matter. This was Anders – human, mage, insincere, wiseass, brother-at-arms, brave, and good-looking. A bit. More than a bit. Sigrun rebuked herself for the last thought, instead longing to run her hands over the smooth planes of his chest, mostly out of curiosity. Dwarf men had hairy chests. So did some human men, but this was different.

He was thin, but his robes didn’t make that a secret. She was more muscular than he, and, as she removed her tunic and trousers, did not hide this. She did not hide her body. Human women could keep their coy modesty. They were alone, this was private, and she would not cover up with a blanket. She would stand in the pool of candlelight cast from the single taper on the writing desk.

And he would look. He did look, and his jaw gaped as those long, large fingers sought to touch the hard lines made by the muscles in her stomach. It tickled. She smiled and lifted one of his hands, guiding it to a place that she wanted to be touched.

She was still smiling when she began to touch him in places that he preferred.

It was easier to kneel next to him on the bed, as he stretched out on his back, watching his face, the play of shadows cast by the candlelight changing the curves of his cheeks and nose. He did not close his eyes, but stared at her and at hers, watching and learning and teaching all at once. She straddled his hips, then his thighs. The moments seemed to slip away, as did the sweat on her forehead and the same on his chest and neck.

Brother-at-arms. Brother-in-arms. This was what the Legion did in the dark shadows of the Deep Roads after a long battle, a good drink, and a good meal. It was natural to Sigrun as the pleasure she and Anders shared. She moaned as she had when she awoke after her Joining, her stomach angry at the assault of drinking something that should not be inside her. His breathing came in short, heated, deep pants. He had been running. He had been fighting, retreating to a rock to cast a healing spell or to throw a lightning bolt.

The darkspawn had been defeated, but there would always be more.

There would always be war.

There would always be camaraderie. A hero hoisted upon the soldiers of his admirers. A cool tankard after a long battle. The song of a bard, his fingers strumming his lute, Anders’ fingers digging into her fevered flesh, her lips parted in toneless, wordless tales left untold. The tempo of the song grew, and the heat did not abate, but pressed against their bare skin and demanded repayment.

Heat. Fire. Dworkin’s bombs destroying darkspawn and property alike. Flashes of burning lyrium, the reds and blues altogether, burning as bright as the sun before diminishing into darkness. Walls collapsed. Stone met earth.

Sigrun sighed and laid her head on Anders’ bare, sweat-streaked chest. She half-expected him to make some sort of wisecrack that would indicate that he wanted to be left alone. It was his room, after all, and he was within his rights to sleep alone in it. She would not have minded. After all, after years of having slept on stone, to sleep even in her tiny bed in her own room was akin to some of the finer things in life, and held the promise of deep, undisturbed rest.

He did not ask her to leave. He did not speak. He only wrapped his thin arms around her, and slid the fingers of one of his hands into her hair again.

She wanted to ask about the Fade, more questions about dreams, and what it was like to have them. Instead, sleep stole her away until the early morning hours, when she awoke to the gentle rhythm of Anders’ breathing and beating, like a march into battle on the promise of a new day, of his heart.


End file.
